Reasoning With American Christians

Can Liberals and Progressives Reach America’s Christian Fundamentalists and Evangelicals?

To be clear: I am a Christian. I am an American, born and raised. I am NOT an “American Christian.” I am a Christ-centered Christian woman of Faith first, and foremost. I am an American second. That being said…

There is no way to reach far right fundamentalist evangelicals with the force of your arguments. Even when those convictions are clearly detrimental to their own lives, conservative Americans cling fiercely to them. It’s really very dark within their convictions.

Not only do my own kin hold those convictions, I have lived most of my life in extremely conservative enclaves in America — Florida, Tennessee, Missouri, Virginia, and North Carolina, with kin in Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Texas, Arizona, Georgia, and Alabama. From my own observations of a lifetime among those who hold such convictions, I think much of the reasoning (conscious or not) is as follows:

• First and foremost, if you are a liberal or not a conservative, you are wrong and sinful in your beliefs — even outright apostate and heretical.
• “Conservatives” have an ingrained refusal to accept they could be in error, and will not acknowledge even the possibility.